Texas Public School District Seeks LMS to Centralize Content

As this school district shifts to a blended learning environment, they seek to have a robust learning management system to house lessons and to centralize a decentralized system.

State: Texas

Number of Students: 2,524

School Type: Public School District

Free and Reduced Lunch: 82.1%

Grade Level: PK-12

English Language Learners: 36.5%

School Context

This school district serves 2,530 students from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds with a wide range of individual needs. The student population includes 82% economically disadvantaged students, 65% at-risk learners, 36% second language learners, 9% special needs students and 5% gifted and talented students. They aim to transform the learning environment and teaching style to help more students reach their maximum potential. They are seeking to get 90% of students to spend a portion of each school day in a blended learning environment, resulting in all students reaching their maximum potential to be prepared for postsecondary life, whether it be college or career.

State of Technology

The teachers in the district have complete autonomy when it comes to storing and delivering content to students. As the district plans to make a more blended environment for all schools, they feel they need a place where all teachers and students go to access their content.

This district does not currently use an learning management system (LMS). Looking for one to house a central location to make curriculum transparent for teachers and students in K-12 graders. They need a place to house curriculum content and third party resources. Teachers are now working using their own preference platforms, including those like Google Classroom, Edmodo, Schoology (free version), ITunes U. It is a real mix in the district and they want to be able to systematically streamline this so that learning instruction is consistent throughout the district.

Tech Needs & Requirements

The network is looking for a robust LMS that includes innovative and intuitive features. Ideally, the tool can track class attendance, have weekly student/teacher goal-setting and some kind of way to track their progress of goals. Students should have calendars and teachers should be able to see a student's calendar.

The teacher should have the ability to customize and curate lessons for students. They would like the ability to assign different lessons to different student groups if possible to personalize the learning. Students can access lessons and daily assignments. Students should be access the tool for an overview of what they will need to learn for the class, but they also will be learning in a station rotation model. The tool should have formative assessment features built in. Additionally, the school is hoping that the system contains a way to integrate with their gradebook (iTex) if possible, even through exporting CSV.

The tool must provide a method for storing and organizing the content used to create lessons and courses. There should be a central repository where teachers can find, create and use assignments/courses based on grade, subject, standards, end of year target. Teachers often create their own videos and would like to embed them if possible.They should also be able to build a library of resources. The tool should host a repository of third-party content like Khan academy and Compass Learning. Ideally, the tool can embed videos instead of simply linking to content outside of the platform.

The tool should be TEKS aligned with some customization.

Teachers want the ability to give actionable feedback to students within the tool. Comments can be asynchronous as long as it is actionable (ie. able to provide links to students for more help). They would also like to have some sort of community discussion board (or the ability to create small group discussions). If a question were created, students could reply and the format should be intuitive and user friendly that open to multiple forms of response, including peer-to-peer. However, they would like a safety feature for profane keywords and pictures, if that is possible.

Students should be able to see where they are in pace, but having a lot of control is not a priority to this district.

The teachers will use data to inform instruction. They will use the LMS to curate and create lessons for students or groups of students. They often will record a video and administer the lesson in a flipped model. They will be able to give actionable feedback to students on their assignments.

The tool must have the ability to tag content with standards and be aligned with TEKS (Texas Standards). Teachers need a high level of curatorial control with the ability to create and share content within the tool. The tool needs to have assessment capability. The tool should be a central repository for lessons and plans and the ability to link/embed third party content, like videos. The tool should be flexible and user friendly and device agnostic. The school offers a variety of hardware such as PC, iPad, laptops, Chromebooks. The tool should be device agnostic. Data should be actionable. Ideally, they want something so that they can progress monitor and export to PDF, CSV, and if the tool provides visualization of data, that would be a plus. The tool should integrate with Clever, Google, SIS and Eduphoria.